Most of the settings in Secrets and Lies are fictional: Carol’s café, the Linden House art gallery, the apartments, Paul’s school. Two sites are real: the Roy Thomson Hall where Carol and Patrick attend the symphony, and the Toronto Island parks.
I wrote the island scenes with some help from Google Maps, but in 2013 my husband and I were in Toronto and visited the island parks. Like Carol and Joey, we took a water taxi to the islands and rode back on the regular ferry. I took hundreds of pictures, to capture the feel, and although we visited in mid-August and Carol and Joey went in September, they may have seen things like this:

Some of the Toronto Island gardens [photo credit: Janet Sketchley]

This is the path they walked along before the guy stole Carol’s bag. If you walk far enough, it becomes a boardwalk. This is the concrete wall they’d have leaned on to watch the paddleboarder.

Plenty of activity on the water — the paddleboarder they watched may have looked like this. [photo credit: Janet Sketchley]

This is the regular passenger ferry to/from the Island parks, with the CN Tower in the background. [photo credit: Janet Sketchley]

Roy Thomson Hall. What an interesting shape! Sadly, we didn’t get inside to enjoy a performance. [photo credit: Janet Sketchley]
Beautiful pictures – thanks for sharing.
It was fun to actually trace some of Carol’s fictional steps!